Sirens, page 65
And woke up. It was pitch black. The dead of night. For a moment she lay
where she was, listening to her heart race. She closed her eyes but
behind the lids she saw again that terrible lupine face. Her eyes
snapped open. I was going so fast, she thought, recalling the dream. And
then, in a blaze of lightning, Bobby's words came back to her: At that
speed it coulda been a stone thrown up by the trapic in front of you.
But that wasn't true, she knew now, Oh, God! Her knuckles were white
with tension. Why hadn't she remembered this before? There had been no
traffic in front of them. Only the great ponderous semis a quarter of a
mile up ahead and she urging Chris on: Faster! Come on. Faster!
Bonesteel was right. It hadn't been an accident. And that high shape.
That car. An old Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud: Nigel's car, glimpsed in the
rearview mirror of the bike just before ... She sat up in bed. '?" she
called. '!' She swung her legs over the side, got up. She had to tell
Bobby what she had remembered. She reached forward, turned on a light.
And stood stock still. Her closet doors gaped open, the drawers of her
dresser lay tumbled and smashed on the carpet. And her clothes.
Her dresses had been ribboned with shears or a long knife, her blouses
ripped through at the bodice, her jeans and trousers had been
dismembered. She put her hand to her mouth, moving backward, away from
the terrifying display. She felt the side of the bed against the backs
of her knees and whirled. The lamp sent a pool of light on to the bed.
She saw the slight depression on the left where she had slept and just
to the right of it a pale balled object. Without thinking, she leaned
over to get a better look and caught a whiff of male scent so strong
that she almost gagged. But still she had to make sure and she touched
the pale object. ' Godv she breathed. She was staring at a pair of her
567 own silk panties, heavy and musky with a pool of cooling semen. She
lunged for the phone and moaned. The receiver was dead in her hand. She
threw the phone from her, whirled away. The black hallway yawned at her
as if it were alive. She rummaged through her clothes, her hands wet and
shaking until she found a pair of jeans that had been left whole. She
drew these on, discovered a whole T-shirt, pulled it swiftly over her
head. Then she went down the hallway. Halfway to the living room she
paused. She was barely breathing as her senses quested outward for a
tangible sign of Nigel's - it must be Nigel! presence. The stillness was
overwhelming. Her senses seemed to have become sensitized by her fear so
that now she was becoming aware of the multitude of minute noises she
had never before known were there: the brief rasp of wood settling, the
dry scrape of a branch against the side of the house, the hum of the
refrigerator in the wet bar across the expanse of the living room. In
that moment as she crouched in the hall, her palms leaving streaks of
sweat along the walls, all these tiny humdrum sounds were chillingly
transformed. In her mind's eye she could visualize the dark face in the
shadows, the drawn weapon in the taut-fingered hand, the coiled
musculature of the figure stalking her. She thought of the piece of pale
silk lying obscenely so close to where she had lain asleep and a shudder
went through her. The air seemed to flutter in dread. She peered ahead
into the gloom of the living room as if willing her stalker to appear.
So much space in this house, she thought. So many rooms to hide out in.
And where was Pete? She knew that she could not stay in this position
much longer. Her muscles would begin to cramp and then she would be no
good at all. She must rise and methodically go through each room - or
leave. Now. Get up and run. These were her only choices. She needed a
weapon and for that she would have to get to the kitchen. Rubens kept no
guns but there was a set of large ing knives in the kitchen, on the wall
next to the eye-level ave oven. But first she had to see if all the
phones were The nearest extension was in the living room, inside the
drawer of the cocktail table in the conversation pit. Again she strained
to see into the darkness. Nothing. She d to breathe long enough to
listen. Nothing but the ing of her heartbeat in her inner ear. Her flesh
began to e took a deep breath, steeling herself, then went swiftly the
hallway, turning on the lights in the living room, back in the pool, the
tennis courts, the enormous garden. needed light now in the same basic
way she needed food water. There was about it the element of survival:
the itive organism clamouring against the bars of its cage in r;
darkness was equated with death. The obese mermaid watched her tenderly
from her froth- med rock as she made her way towards the sofa in the re
of the room. The back of it was towards her and she d not see down into
the pit until she was very close. Then e jumped, screaming a little
until she had the presence of d to bite back on it. The drawer to the
cocktail table was open, the base of the ne upended. The long red cord
to its receiver was stretched t, wrapped again and again around the neck
of Patrolman e Andrews. Daina stared at his face, unable for the moment
turn away. The cheeks and eyes were fully as bloated as of the mermaid
in the painting. His tongue, so swollen . round, protruded part way
betweedhis lips and there a foul stench as if he were a baby who had not
yet been t-trained. here was a burning behind her eyes and her head
began throb on the side where she had been hurt. Tears came to eyes but
she berated herself, balling her fingers into a fist. n't! she screamed
at herself. It won't do you any good to ep for him now. She turned her
mind towards Nigel tead, remembering what he had done to Maggie and
perhaps Chris. She skirted the conversation pit, running for the kitchen
w. The knives stood out in her mind like shining swords. 568 569 That
room was empty, too, but when she turned on the light, she moaned. The
empty wooden box had been ripped from its place on the wall.
Methodically, now, she went through the drawers and cabinets looking for
anything she could use against him. There was nothing more lethal than a
spatula. Back in the living room the mermaid mocked her smugly, safe on
her perch and, on the mantelpiece, the two Oscars - hers and Rubens' -
stood together like a pair of tin soldiers. She crossed quickly to the
fireplace, took down her statuette. She hefted its weight in her right
hand. It was heavy enough to inflict a good deal of damage provided it
was swung with enough force and aimed correctly. She went up the three
shallow steps to the window-doors at the rear of the room. The linen
curtains were closed. Transferring the golden statuette to her left
hand, she reached out, took hold of one edge of the curtain. It
fluttered as if from a breeze and she froze. A breeze was impossible.
All the windows were closed. She looked carefully around until she
realized that her trembling hand had set off a ripple effect in the
light fabric. Cautiously she pulled aside a tiny section of the curtain,
bending slightly to peer outside. In the floodlit night, she saw part of
the tennis courts, the extreme left-hand side of the pool, sprayed by
the multi-coloured underwater lights, staining the fagade of the white
wooden lattice-work cabana, and beyond - the cabana! There was a phone
in there on a separate line. Few people knew about it because Rubens
used it exclusively for business. If I can just make it across to the
cabana, she thought, feeling the weight of the statuette, I'll have a
chance. She shifted a bit until she was near the seam of the double
window-doors. She reached down slowly and, behind the barrier of the
curtains, pushed the small metal V lever that unlocked the doors. Her
hand moved downward, gripping the knob to the left-hand door. She turned
it, careful to make no noise and, when it was hard over, pushed the door
open inch by inch. When there was enough of a gap for her to slip
through, she went out. 570 -The night chittered on around her. She heard
the soft -lapping of the water against the pool's side. The crickets ed
away and once, far off, she heard the dull booming a car's exhaust
diminishing. She put the statuette in her right hand, swung it back and
slightly like a pendulum, getting her muscles used to its ight and mass
distribution. No use lugging it around if she sn't going to be prepared
to use it. All right, she told herself. This is it. Take a deep breath
you're off. She sprinted off to the right from the side of the house and
s rounding the shallow edge of the pool when a voice said rply: '!3 She
ignored it, went on running. It came again and now she saw movement,
heading out from trees towards her. ', don'tv The great booming of a
pistol shot brought her up short. stood stood there panting not more
than twenty feet from safety of the cabana. But she knew if she made a
move of kind now, he, would fire again and this time hit her. She lifted
her head as she heard rustling off to her right in garden. She saw the
black bulky silhouette. '!' He came towards her in long confident
strides. He was sed in black jeans and a matching turtleneck. He wore
e-soled shoes that made no sound when he walked. In his t hand she saw
the long snout of a Magnum -357. He smiled as he came across the grass
and she sighed in f. ' I glad to see you,' she said. ' makes twice 've
saved my life.' His smile turned into a grin, the grin into a leer.
He lifted muzzle of the gun, pushed it into the spot between her sts.
His voice was like liquid silver. ' saved you that time . Francisco so I
could have you at this moment. Ever e I held you in my arms that night
I've thought about you; t I wanted to do to you.' He moved his face in
towards and she pulled back, a frightened mouse from the hypnotic 571
swaying of the adder's head. ' don't -' ''s what I thought about while
I watched you sleeping; while'I used your panties to -' '!'she gasped
and tried to bolt. His free hand came out, gripped her painfully,
pulling her around to face him again. Daina could not bear to look into
those eyes any longer. They were as vast as a universe, blotting out
everything. She closed her eyes, moaned slightly.
She heard the tiny clatter of sounds near her and her eyes flew open.
"Now,' Silka said, ''ll just give you a little shot of something to,
uhm, soften you up.' The thing looked like a miiature coffin. He opened
it up and Daina saw the shining syringe, the tiny vial of clear liquid.
"Something' - the leer came again - ' put you in the mood! He extracted
the syringe from its box, began to fill it. Daina did not have to be
told what was going in there: horse cut with strychnine. '," she said,
her heart pounding and the fear flooding through her, ' don't have to do
this! ', yes,' Silka said. ' do.' And all she could think of now was how
wrong Bobby had been about everything; how his obsession with Nigel had
caused him to miscalculate and would now cause her death. Once she had
been injected, she knew, that would be it. There would be no guardian
angel for her as there had been for Chris in New York. And, in any case,
Silka would have recalibrated the dosage. He pushed the plunger slightly
on the inverted syringe and several drops of the liquid spurted out,
silvery in the light. Silka nodded. ' right!
His filled hand was moving, the tip of the syringe looking sharp and
lethal. The point was levelling off as he prepared to plunge it home
into the soft flesh on the inside of her elbow. In that moment, she
lifted her right arm, which she had allowed to hang lax and perfectly
still at her side, and smashed the gold statuette against the side of
Silka's head. He stumbled to the right, off balance, and Daina began run
to her right, heading for the thick tangle of the garden. With each step
the small of her back ached, tingling just if that fat steel-jacketed
shard of death were about to strike Heard a booming and she flung
herself forward and to the e, crawling the last three yards past the
first line of hedges. Panting, she sat up, moving on hands and knees
farther into foliage. A booming came again just like the last one.
stinctively she ducked, moments afterwards realizing that e shots were
coming from the foliage, not into it. Crouching, she half ran in a
zig-zag course towards the unds of the gunfire. Past the great privet
hedge she saw him uching there, aiming carefully. He must have heard her
roach but he could not break his concentration. He zed off another shot
and then she was beside him. ' 1 My God, he's a madman 1' ' fanatic,'
Bonesteel said, sighting through a gap in the ves. He fired, said, '!
This bastard's good. Very good.' glanced at her. ''s a fanatic and
that's not the same thing all. He's mad all right but in a very canny
way.' Quickly, reloaded, fired off another shot. @I came as fast as I
could,' he said softly. His head was ing back and forth as he searched
for a sign of Silka. ' gered those poor lab guys until they gave me what
I wanted. is was shot in the left temple. We pulled fragments of a 7
slug from what was left of his skull. You were Silka's carrying a Magnum
-357,' she said. ''m not surprised ... now.' 14you were wrong all along
about Nigel.' ome on,' he said, taking her hand.
"Let's move. We'll be g ducks, otherwise.' e took her through the bushes
on an acute tangent from ector of his last shots. They crouched down.
Daina could 11 the harsh stink of cordite and the heavy scent of fear.
es from Heather Duell flashed through her mind like tning. There seemed
to be no difference to her between t she felt then and what she felt
now; the two had merged, lessly. 572 573 'I want this bastard,' she
whispered, ' what he did to Maggie and to Chris. For the misery he's
brought.' He reached out, put his hand on her arm. ' want you out of
here. It's too volatile now ... the whole place is a red sector.' ' you
think I'm leaving now you're ''ll do as I sayp he hissed savagely,
pushing at her. ' the hell away. I'll eat this bastard for dinner by the
time you're -' The explosion and his grimace seemed to her to occur at
precisely the same instant. Thinking back on it, of course, thak could
not have been the case. Bonesteel's body leaped towards her, against
her, bowling her over. She felt his heart hammering against her,
colliding with her own. ',' he whispered. ' Christ.' She could see the
pain written across his face. His brows were knitted with it, his eyes
filled up with it, dark and haunted. His face was filmed in sweat and
she felt a widening pool of wetness between them. ',' she called. ',
Bobby!' She heard the sounds of the foliage hissing, saw the long stalks
bending in towards her and, without thinking, tore the -38 revolver from
his grasp, wriggled out from under his inert bulk and scrambled away. A
booming and a shot whined away just to her left. She gasped, changed
direction and kept on going, past tree boles and high swaying fems. She
turned once and, seeing some movement, pulled the trigger. The gun
bucked in her hand, the force catching her unprepared, and she had to
use her other hand to stop it from flying away. She moved onward,
shivering. The fear was driving everything jean-Carlos had taught her
right out of her mind. She caught herself crying, berated herself. Come
on! Pull yourself together. If you don't, you'll surely die. There's no
one now between you and him. Behind the bole of a tall palm, she
crouched, listening. It was very still. The gunfire had sent the birds
upward, screaming, d even the crickets had ceased their chatter. But, on
the er hand, the reports could easily be mistaken for a car ring. She
could hold no hope for the neighbours' onse. She could feel her heart
labouring, the stink of fear hard her. And she thought, At last you've
got what you wanted; ieved what you first wen t to Baba to find so many
years ago. She inched her face around the bole of the tree, looking
right and left, shrank back as a bullet thunked into the d, whined away
into the night like a bee. She put up the squeezed off a two-handed
shot. This time she was ready the bullet went where she had aimed it.
She shot again. Stillness. Where was he? Just the tops of the high dusty
